A Day in the Life

There was a good deal of culture shock my first two weeks on the ship. I have adjusted a bit now, but still I feel removed from the ship ethos. Life here is simultaneously slow and fast, communal and lonely, hectic and boring, and many other opposites. I guess life is like that everywhere, but here it seems amplified. If you stick a bunch of people in an enclosed environment, their true natures shine. At least on the main land, when it gets too intense, there is always room to remove yourself from a situation.

Here, life is forced upon you by the clashing of so many people from different parts of the world. The paymaster is Indian, the waitresses are Slavic, the janitors are Filipino, the captains are Italian, the dancers are English and the musicians are American. This list goes on, and honestly, I haven’t even scratched the surface of these new cultures and peoples. All of this has overwhelmed me a bit and, being the introvert that I am, has caused me to withdraw.

Now that I am more comfortable with the work, my ever-present complaints have turned to my lack of a social life. I know friends will come eventually, but I’m becoming impatient. Friends back home tell me that I am slow to warm up to people, and this is true. I remember back in college I thought to myself “I’ll never be close with this person” many times. Now that I am looking at things in retrospect, I realize that saying those things made them self-fulfilling. Also, I have said those things about some of the closest friends I have before I really knew them. I’m just finding it difficult to meet new people, start real conversations with the ones I know, and just generally form rapports with anyone. It feels like things are snowballing and as my social ineptitude gains momentum, it becomes harder and harder to crawl out of.

I like to think that I am open to new experience and change; it’s one of the reasons I took this job in the first place. Though maybe I’m not, seeing my reluctance to really take the ship in and accept that this is where I will be for at least another few months. A lot of people have told me that they respect me for being able to uproot myself and try something new. Now that I’ve done it, I understand why they said those things. We have roots for a reason, and living without the stability they provide is a lonesome path. It’s hard to dig into these cold, white-washed steel floors. Some people look like they have, but I wonder. The way I’ve heard others talk about this ship makes me think being here demands loneliness. Even those who are here with their spouses are going in alone to a degree. As a first time crew member who knew no one coming into this, things feel a bit stacked against me.

Today we got a new Sax player. He looks around my age and can play from what I’ve heard so far. He has gotten a warmer welcome than I did; It might be because he has worked on ships with our music director before, it might be because he doesn’t play the role in the band that I do, or it could just be a more approachable guy than I am, but watching it happen was frustrating. I guess I’m just expecting making friends to happen to me. It has worked for me before, but maybe I can’t do that type of thing here. I work best one-on-one, and there are rarely situations here where I can get that kind of time with someone. I’m gonna continue to be persistent, everyone at home continues to tell me that it will happen naturally because I’m such a likable guy blah blah, but I don’t feel likable right now. I’m distant, lovesick and just generally out of my element. Hopefully I will get past all that, but for now…

…well…

That’s enough of me being a downer for now. I wanted to walk you through what a day in the life of a cruise musician is like. As I said earlier, it is a both fast and slow lifestyle. There is TONS of downtime, the work itself is pretty easy now that I’ve gotten past hell week, and we get privileges that a lot of the crew does not get.

My days usually start any time between ten and one. I’ll stumble out of the top bunk and do a quick workout before I clean up and go eat lunch. We have a rehearsal around two a few days of the week, now it usually consists of catching me up with the rest of the band. Other days, we won’t have to “work” until 5:30, and that is just a quick sound check. Most of my hours happen between seven and midnight, those are the production shows, dance sets and karaoke sets. I will only work around four hours on most days, and a “heavy” day clocks in around five and a half. My hours are usually spread out; with at least a 15 minute break every hour and usually a few hours between hour long chunks of work. Before working here, I was used to working 8 hours shifts, with no breaks and being on my feet the whole time. Honestly, here it feels like I’m not working at all. The kicker is my co-workers actually complain about how much we work. They moan when we have a two hour rehearsal, and complain about working five hour days. It’s like they just want to get paid to be on vacation, and to tell you the truth, they kinda are.

Being part of the entertainment staff, to an extent, we are the faces of the boat. Kissing ass is part of the job, and having worked at a conference center helped me perfect my customer service face. A friend of mine who worked with me talks about being able to turn a mental switch on. That’s what it’s like, as soon as I walk through those crew only doors, I have to be all smiles, greet every guest I pass and make small talk like a pro. It’s funny; when I’m being superficial about it I have no problem striking up conversations. However, being a white knight for the company also allows some privileges. I can go into passenger areas whenever I want. I can eat in the lido café, I can use the guest gym, and I can wear casual clothes most of the time. We have our own dining hall with partial waiter service, and in general have more freedoms than most of the crew on the ship does.

The most challenging part of the job is when I’m in the hot seat. I’m the engine of this entire band. It doesn’t matter how well everyone else is playing, without me the whole thing falls apart. The horns can afford to sit a lick out, the guitarist can skip a beat and the pianist doesn’t have to follow the music note for note, but I can’t do any of that stuff. The work is fast, I’m flinging sheet music off the stand as I try to keep up with the click track. The smoke machines on the stage are blowing in my eyes, the singers are off-beat and the tempo changes are abrupt. Even one hour in the hot seat is quite strenuous, it’s requires total mental, physical and emotional focus, and demands a level of consistency from me that I am not used to delivering.

When we’re on stage, every performance comes with anxiety and nerves. I guess that’s what we mostly get paid for. Most people have a debilitating stage fright. I got over that a long time ago, but that apprehension never goes away fully. I’ve grown to like it a bit, it makes me feel alive. I know that the day when that feeling before a performance goes away will be the day when I start phoning my performances in.  

Musicians on the ship get a bad rep. A lot of the crew thinks we’re lazy (and some of us are,) that we have an easy job (which it mostly is,) and that we’re troublemakers. It’s not a bad lifestyle, but if I’m still doing this in a few years, I want one of you guys to shoot me in the foot.

Much love,

-D